Back on their feet

(Clockwise from top) Tom Sainsbury, Morgana O'Reilly, Madeleine Sami and Jaquie Brown in Dance Troupe Supreme. Photo / Supplied

There will be no third series of award-winning TV comedy The Jaquie Brown Diaries, which has left its star time to get down, so to speak.

Brown, who is about to make her theatre debut, not only has to act, she also has to dance. She has never danced on stage before, and has no training, but will play a professional dancer in Dance Troupe Supreme.

"I love TV but we decided not to do a third series [of Jaquie Brown Diaries] and you have to move on," she says. "I'm having a wonderful time learning new skills, building awesome friendships and learning how to dance. After a while, the dancing just gets into your brain."

But credit where credit is due, says castmate Morgana O'Reilly.

"Jaquie is the most professional one of the lot of us. She's always on time and she always knows her lines."

Brown says that's because she is paranoid about forgetting them. She is all too well aware that on TV you can do another take or edit the footage but there are no second chances on stage. She acknowledges the TV show required her to take a risk and that helped build confidence but she says theatre is a totally different "killer fish".

"I guess it helped me with things like learning lines, and to get them in my head more easily, but the one thing you can't prepare for are the nerves. Sometimes when we are rehearsing and we have our backs to where the audience will be and we're doing our imaginary claps, it hits me that this will soon be for real."

At least she's in good company.

Dance Troupe Supreme features her friend and Diaries co-star Madeleine Sami, up-and-comer O'Reilly and Yvette Parsons. It's the latest work by Tom Sainsbury, variously described as a maverick, prolific and destined to become a classic playwright of his generation.

In the past two years Sainsbury, who has won Playmarket's Young Playwright competition four times, has written and produced around a dozen plays which range from dystopian dramas to pitch black comedies.

The 27-year-old has an uncanny knack of attracting high-profile performers to star in his low-to-no-budget shows. Sami says that's because they're funny, a little bit dark and make audiences laugh - and then squirm that they laughed.

"I've been an admirer for years and I've been trying to get in one of his plays but eventually I had to stop dropping hints and just come right out and ask if we could work together."

Brown was at the Britney Spears concert in Melbourne when she was persuaded to sign up. She'd travelled over with Sami and Sainsbury, who were already working on a script. They spent the entire concert dancing while Brown watched. That she resisted the temptation to get on her feet didn't put Sami and Sainsbury off asking her to join Dance Troupe Supreme.

As well as writing and directing Dance Troupe Supreme, Sainsbury has a starring role as Sean James, a predatory love machine with his eye on Charlotte (Brown), who's an innocent ingenue fresh out of dance school.

"She's a lot like how I am in real life - very enthusiastic, fired up and ready to go," says Brown.

Charlotte's fellow dancers are a little less enthusiastic about their tour of New Zealand's rural heartland. Kellyanna (Sami) is the self-proclaimed group leader never shy of reminding others of her glory days in the United States; Amber (O'Reilly) is a hard-partier who's starving herself to perfection and Honcho (Parsons) is the hapless stage manager pushed to her limits by the troupe's never ceasing demands.

Sami did Irish dancing as a child; O'Reilly, the daughter of dancer/choreographer Mary-Jane O'Reilly, did tap dancing because, she says, she likes to make a noise when she dances.

Despite their combined lack of dance experience, Dance Troupe Supreme choreographer Kerryn McMurdo says her job has been made easier because the cast know how to move and are committed to the project.

Sainsbury wanted to write a play about appreciating what you've got - and one with dancing in it provided a chance to satirise music videos.

"I wrote it because I had to keep remembering that I do what I do because I love it. Sometimes it's easy to lose your way, to forget why you're passionate about something and just start doing things for the money or because you feel obliged to."

But it's not all toe-tapping sweetness and light. Sami and Sainsbury say there are some dark themes about power and control amid the humour and the music. That Britney Spears features heavily speaks for itself.

Lowdown

What: Dance Troupe Supreme

Where and when: Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, March 19-20, 24-27